kazz

Hey Hey. Yes, I think all of the northwest was in the Gorge this season. This is how things worked out for Eric and I: It had just dumped 4 feet of snow before we landed on the Ruth. We were unable to fly into the root canal because of the new snow, and we were anxious to get out, so we flew in below Dickey. We thought it better to let the snow settle before getting on anything anyway. And then It was beautiful, but HOT jesus too HOT. We climbed the backside of Dickey via 747 as an acclimatization climb, and that turned out to be really scenic and nice. Awesome views from the summit. After that we packed up and planned on heading up to the root canal for 5 days, humping it up the hidden coulior approach. I can testify that taking a heavy pack up that route is about the dumbest thing you could do, but we did it anyway. There is a really short WI3, almost mixed move in the gully, no fun with 60 pounds on your back. We camped below shaken, lower down, so we didn't really meet everyone camped out at the landing strip until later. We decided to go up Ham and Eggs, and if the route was in good shape, try Shaken not Stirred afterwards. Ham and Eggs was complete warm slop. In cold conditions it would have been awesome, but unless you fire the whole thing before 8am, it was melting. And the fresh snow compounded the slop factor. All of this would have been tolerable, but everyone in the root canal had been waiting for a cold spell, and so while it wasn't cold, it was "colder" the night we started the climb. We ended up behind 2 parties (Tom and Greg, and Wayne and Partner), and also Ben Gilmore was rapping down with a client from a bivy the night before. This made for epic amounts of spindrift and ice debris coming down the gully on us, and most at all of the ice pitches the gully hourglasses and funnels this shit onto your head. Climbing up through it, literally we would close our eyes and just swing, cause you could not look up without filling your face with blizzard. We were in the wrong to get on the route behind other parties, but when you are there, it is really hard to wait it out because you cannot count on the weather. We stuck it out and were in the final snow ramp to the top of the couliour when we decided the snow conditions were too miserable to warrant continuing the final 400 ft of snow to the col, so we rapped down at that point. The ice was so rotten in Ham and Eggs that we wrote off any ideas about Shaken not Stirred, whose bottom pitches looked like they had been broiled, nuked, and deep fried. It was just too warm. So we headed back down to the Ruth Glacier, and then it started snowing again. We skied up to Don Sheldon and met up with most of the other parties flying out, and then it was many many many beers at the West Rib back in Talkeet. The sunny days, it was so hot, all I wanted to do was go rock climbing. So many possibilities. Definitely want to go back for a rock trip. Dan- nice job on 11.3. I talked to Westman about your time on the Rooster comb- sounds nasty. And nasty in Alaska is REALLY nasty. Lemme know if you wanna get together for slides, I got some good ones. Not scanned though. kevin